For about a year now, the PSD and QDDR have been agonizing over how to simplify the convoluted network of agencies and actors involved in international development. Ironically, however, both are suffering delays—the PSD, for example, was to be completed this January—due to the bureaucratic congestion they aim to resolve. Staats worries that the Obama administration is running out of time not just to issue strategies but also to implement any meaningful or lasting reforms.

Meanwhile, she notes that the system further convoluted due to the launch two new initiatives, namely the Global Health Initiative—whose governance structure is rumored to be comprised of an overarching strategic council with interagency team leads from USAID, State, HHS, Treasury, MCC, and others plus an operational committee made up of the USAID administrator, head of the CDC, US global AIDS coordinator—and Feed the Future—which boasts two new deputies, one for diplomacy and another for development, involves multiple agencies, but still lacks a head coordinator.

Nancy Birdsall argues that USAID administrator Raj Shah—whose former employers include the US Department of Agriculture and the Gates Foundation, where he served as Director of Agricultural Development—should fill the role of the yet-to-be-appointed coordinator for Feed the Future.

Why exacerbate the “gross fragmentation” of the US global development system? The Budget Insight blog at the Stimson Center recounts a tragic repercussion of bureaucratic bottlenecks and gross fragmentations: the Haiti relief effort. A Senate Foreign Relations Committee report reiterated advice given over and over again: USAID and the State Department need to streamline procedures such as multi-step reporting requirements and human resource regulations. In addition to excessive US bureaucracy, the lack of coordination of donors worldwide and the leadership void compound Haiti’s troubles.

Immediately following the earthquake, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry asked: “Who is coordinating this? Who is going to call the shots and say ‘you’ve got to get debris out of here and here’s where that debris is going to go’? How do we get to the kind of coordination that makes sure that we are shifting to a Haitian solution as fast as possible?” More than five months later, we still don’t have the answer, but those are the right questions to be asking.

The Center for Global Prosperity is the leading source of information about the diverse new world of private sector international development, from innovative philanthropy models to microfinance, and from social entrepreneurship to public-private partnerships. The Center publishes the Index of Global Philanthropy and Remittances, which details the sources and magnitude of private giving to the developing world.